"Apple's new iOS 7, which the company unveiled last week at its Worldwide Developer Conference, says a lot about the future of mobile devices because Apple owns the future of mobile devices." If you're an Apple fanatic, you're going to love this article. If you're not an Apple fanatic, you'll be shaking your head in disbelief that the once great AppleInsider runs stuff like this these days. Hey, there's always MacRumors - the last great bastion of proper Apple rumour reporting.

I think iOS was a clear reactionary move to (however fair) complaints that iOS was boring.

Of course the soup of the day just happens to be swiss design and flat aesthetics so that's where iOS went. I don't really think they copied Windows Phone or Android as much as they drew clear inspiration.

I think Apple remains uniquely Apple while lifting the good things from Android/Windows Phone. Quick setting changing is a thing I miss on my Windows Phone, and its great that iOS is taking it from Android. FWIW I think UbuntuOS currently does this best.

I'd still say Android's Holo theme is the least polarizing and best balance of skeumorphism and digital design that I've seen on a mobile OS. It isnt overly textured and annoying like iOS is, without being flat to an extreme like Windows Phone.

This article raises some good points (particularly about the importance of meaningful statistics like app developer revenue vs useless activation counts from Android) but again, is tinged with the usual fanatic extremism.

But still, Apple needed something, anything, which would freshen their UI a bit. I think they were wise to retain some familiarity while toning down a lot of the adornments. I don't think Apple's redesign will be received badly.

Apple may very well be leading mobile computing, but it isn't because of an unreleased OS shown off a few days ago.